Three-Dimensional Image Reconstruction of Targets Under the Illumination of Terahertz Gaussian Beam—Theory and Experiment

In this paper, the wave equation based on phase shift migration technique is extended for terahertz 3-D imaging with quasi-optical transceivers. An analytical expression of the reconstructed 3-D point-spread function for targets under the illumination of a terahertz Gaussian beam was derived with this reconstruction technique. The quantitative relationship between the imaging quality and the parameters of the transmitted Gaussian beam was obtained, which provides a good criterion to be followed when designing the terahertz quasi-optical transceivers in the imaging systems. Moreover, the spatial sampling criterion was derived strictly which is also quantitatively related to the parameters of the transmitted Gaussian beam. Simulation results with fairly good agreement were given to verify the theoretical results derived in this paper. Finally, a monostatic prototype imager with a Gaussian beam transceiver was designed for the proof-of-principle experiments in 0.2-THz band. The 3-D imaging results of different targets and a mannequin with concealed threat objects were given to demonstrate the theoretical results obtained in this paper and the effectiveness of the 3-D terahertz image reconstruction for security applications.